


Midnight Phobia

by kindlystrawberry



Category: Rune Factory 4
Genre: Arachnophobia, Banter, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Marital fluff, Short & Sweet, Spiders, Teasing, but like barely it's mostly banter, they are so absolutely whipped for each other I'm telling you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:53:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28378776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kindlystrawberry/pseuds/kindlystrawberry
Summary: His voice turns much more quiet, brows furrowed and eyes squinting as suspicion creeps into his tone. “Frey, are you…” he takes two steps to cross towards her, but stops when he notices how Frey’s entire posture tenses, staring at the spider like it might strike out at her at any moment. “Actually scared of spiders?”
Relationships: Frey/Leon (Rune Factory)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 20





	Midnight Phobia

A scream pierces the night air. 

Leon is awake in an instant, all but throwing himself from the bed before his consciousness has even fully caught up to the fact that he’s not asleep anymore. 

“Frey?” His voice sounds rough to his own ears— from having just woken up, yes, but also from the tight concern working a vice grip around his heart, turning his pulse erratic and his muscles tense as he focuses everything on  _ where is she, is she safe, what happened?  _

His ears twitch in the direction of where they pick up a noise and Leon, clad in his disheveled sleeping robes as he is, is quickly pushing his way through the door and into the kitchen. Posture taught like a bowstring, his eyes rake over the room until he spots the familiar figure of his wife— despite her usual radiating strength, moonlight washes her trembling figure in silver, making her look like she might disappear at any moment.

She looks… so small.

Leon’s by her side in an instant, cupping her shoulders in his hands and trying to peer into her eyes.

“Frey, my love.” His voice is gentle but urgent in the otherwise quiet room. “Tell me, what’s wrong?”

“Ah… there’s a… spider.” She raises a hand to point behind Leon. He turns around, standing straight and squaring his shoulders so that he might use his body as a shield.

When his eyes once again search the room, Leon expects to see a terrifying arachnid monster, giant, three-headed, and breathing fire. That’s why it takes him longer than it normally would to actually  _ spot  _ the thing, having completely disregarded it in the first place. He glances back over his shoulder at Frey, who’s still hunched up and staring nervously at the same spot she had pointed at:

There on the kitchen counter is a half-made sandwich on a simple green plate, and next to it is a black spider about the size of a large coin. 

Feeling more than a little perplexed but not willing to dismiss the situation so quickly, Leon glances back over his shoulder at his wife. At a whisper, like the actual thing might creep up on them from the shadows, he asks “Where is the spider?”

“Right there!” Frey says louder, her voice regaining some strength. “Don’t you see it on the counter?”

Leon blinks at her. 

Then it hits him with an  _ ‘oh, of course,’  _ kind of revelation. His posture loosens, finally relaxing, and a grin creeps over his lips.

“Ah, yes. I should have known. For a second you really had me there, you know that?” He can feel Frey still staring at him, but Leon’s back is turned as he walks over to the spider. “I have to say, you do know how much I enjoy practical jokes, but pranking your husband like that in the middle of the night isn’t very nice; you nearly sent me into cardiac arrest.” His voice is dripping with easy nonchalance as he opens his palm and lets the little creature tentatively crawl into it. “I should have known, though, because there is simply no way  _ you _ cam be scared of such a—”

His voice dies in his throat when he turns around, and sees Frey practically launch herself back at the far kitchen wall. As if trying to parse whether or not he’s still, in fact, dreaming, Leon glances at his wife, and then down at the harmless spider in his palm, and then back up at her.

“Small thing…” he finishes much more quietly, brows furrowed and eyes squinting as suspicion creeps into his tone. “Frey, are you…” he takes two steps to cross towards her, but stops when he notices how Frey’s entire posture tenses, staring at the spider in his hand like it might strike out at her at any moment. “Actually scared of spiders?”

When she raises her eyes back up to his they somehow manage to both be wide in fright and narrowed in a glare. Her cheeks burn bright red as she says, “Wh-why would I lie about that?”

Leon can’t help it; she just looks too adorable. 

Any lingering silence in the room breaks when Leon bursts out in a fit of laughter, though he does turn slightly sideways so as to hold the spider farther away from Frey. She visibly relaxes, but still shoots him a dirty look. However this just has Leon laughing even harder, his free hand held up in a fist against his lips to try and hold back the sounds to no avail.

Frey’s cheeks burn brighter, and shame colors her tone as she wrings her hands together, eyes falling to the floor. “You don’t have to laugh so much…”

Noting the way her shoulders droop, Leon is quick to set the spider back down on the counter and pull Frey to him.

“Oh, no, Love,” he says sympathetically, though still fighting off the last of his chuckles. He wraps his arms around Frey’s shoulders, hugging her to his chest. “You’re right, that was very rude of me. If you deem it necessary I’ll ask Volkanon to sign me up for etiquette classes immediately.” That gets the expected laugh out of Frey, which warms Leon’s heart. She nuzzles against his chest, and he tightens his embrace. 

“But you must know,” Leon continues, “I wasn’t laughing at your fear— naturally everyone is allowed to have those, no matter how small. I was simply… caught off guard. I genuinely didn’t think you’d be afraid of spiders.”

“Really?” Frey asks, raising her head.

With a very serious and slightly incredulous look on his face, Leon places his hands on Frey’s shoulders again, moving her just enough to make sure they have full eye contact.

“Frey. You are, with no exaggeration, the hero of Selphia. You fight monsters quite literally a hundred times your size on a regular basis. Actually, I think at least a few of those monsters  _ are  _ spider-like, in some way.”

“I…” She laughs, but this time the flush that touches Frey’s cheek looks more bashful than anything else, a slightly wry smile on her lips. “Yeah, you’re right. I know it’s silly, I just can’t help it. Something about spiders just instantly makes me freak out.”

“But spider  _ monsters…  _ don’t?”

With a tilt of her head, Frey thinks it over before answering as if it's the most simple, easy answer in the world, “Nope.”

There’s a second of silence that feels particularly long, broken only when Leon barks out a surprised laugh again. And again. And again.

Leon can see— out of the corner of his tear-blurred eyes— Frey furrow her brows and bite the inside of her cheek, and then when his laughter shows no sign of dying down she lightly punches her fists to his chest. 

“Leon!” Her cheeks are burning again, in that shade of red that he  _ loves.  _ “Really, come on now.”

His lips manage to curl into a grin between his fits of laughter, as he reaches out a hand to pinch at the softness of her cheeks. “I’m sorry, Love. But when you look so impossibly cute, what is a besotted man to do?”

“Oh, geez,” Frey grumbled, making Leon’s laughter start all over again to the point that he drew her back into a hug and buried his face in the crown of her head to try and stifle the sound. In the next few minutes Leon’s mirth finally calms down, mostly as he focuses on the enjoyable feeling of Frey’s hug— her arms wrapped around him, her chest pressed to his, and the feeling of her slowly relaxing.

That’s why he notices when she tenses again. He looks down to find that she’s glaring at a point behind him, and when he cranes his head Leon can see the spider he had left on the counter was traversing around, seemingly drawn to the half-made sandwich.

With a fond grin on his lips, Leon steps back from Frey before making an overly-gallant effort of straightening his back and bowing.

“Ah, let me remove this foul creature from your presence, lest he disturb milady again in the night. Although—” the act drops as a thought hits him, and his voice drops into a lower, teasing tone. “If the looming presence of this spider will send you into my arms again as you seek protection from your adoring hero, then perhaps I should let him roam about and see what happens.”

A laugh startles out of Frey, breathy and as sweet as windchimes. Over the time they have been together (and even before that, longer than he at the time cared to admit) Leon has had the absolute privilege of being able to study all of Frey’s different types of laughs. Thorough and stubborn-minded as he is with the tasks he cares about— which, to be fair, often are used to ignore the tasks  _ other  _ people think he should care about— Leon has also taken the time to learn and categorize all of these laughs in a mental list: what will usually cause them, which emotions they reflect, and how much he likes them. 

Of course, he loves every single one of her laughs, which is rather counter-intuitive to trying to rank them, but that’s beside the point.

This laugh, the kind that has Frey’s lean but delicate shoulders shaking, her beautiful, roughened hand brought up to her lips, and her eyes left slightly wide was one of Leon’s absolute favorites. As was the beautiful pink blush dusting her cheeks in the low-lit kitchen, rendering Leon nearly speechless as he takes in her beauty.

_ “Darling,”  _ she pouts, though this time her eyes are filled warm affection and not embarrassment. “If you want me in your arms, you can just ask. No need for tricks or spiders— we  _ are  _ married, you know.”

For some reason this simple declaration— reminding him of the ease of her love for him, of its unconditionality, of her promise to always be by his side, bringing him light and warmth— does little to bring Leon’s senses back. 

Finally he manages to say, though still too flustered to be anything but sincere, “Ah. Right. Then I’ll take it away. Or— would you rather I kill it?”

“Oh! No, please don’t. It's just a harmless little creature, it’s not really the spider’s fault I’m afraid of it. Also I read that they’re great for pest control, so it’d be a shame not to put it out in the fields.”

Leon finds himself smiling a small, fond smile at Frey’s kindness going so far as to extend to a thing she’s afraid of.

“Sure thing,” he says in a soft voice.

“Thank you.” She leans over to press a kiss against his cheek, and then walks back to the door towards their bedroom. 

Thinking that’s all Frey has to say, Leon walks over to place the unfinished sandwich plate in their fridge before picking up the spider once more. However, his fox ears twitch and he turns to notice her figure silhouetted by the doorway.

“I’ll wait for you in bed?” she asks.

Leon vaguely feels the spider tickle him as it walks up and down his palm, but he’s barely paying attention to that, instead all too focused on the feeling of love spreading in his chest, bleeding into his soft smile, as Frey’s radiating warmth returns.

In a low voice filled with more genuine, open affection than he ever thought he’d be able to feel, let alone show, Leon replies, “With open arms, please.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was just a random idea I had a few months ago, because I'm a big fan of Very Badass Frey having very minor/common phobias. Anyway! I got the inspiration to finally write this from the Rune Factory Fanfic Writer's server, because they're awesome!! And this fic gets a thank you to Spinch for letting me complain about how difficult Leon was being for my writing muse this week.
> 
> Hope y'all enjoyed!!


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